Ropey

Not quite, looks like Phuket is open for minimum of 30 day stays. (includes 2 weeks of quarantine though and you probably need another 2 weeks on return to Oz)

Probably what Markm said. Loads of hotels are closed in Bangkok at the moment.

I'll visit one day and let you know. I think it's probably just a ladyboy owned restaurant.

It's possible that a ladyboy owns the restaurant and these are her friends on opening night. Where did the pics come from? I don't see any bar or restaurant like this in that location when using the map code or searching 'ladyboy bars', closest I could find was 'Mama's Bar' near the location.

Mask use is fucking hilarious, I watched a worker at Foodland take hers off to cough all over the vegetables in the produce section, then replace it, several times. Many people wear masks with their noses out, or just have it wrapped around their neck. Some taxi drivers are using masks that look like old oil rags, I had a driver today who was picking his nose and wiping it on the edge of the mask. Mainly farangs aren't wearing masks, I only do to not rile up the locals as a dirty farang spreading the Corona...

On my mobiles, automatically embedded links fill the page, and load if I try to swipe pass them, so when there's a lot of videos auto-embedded, they all play and crash the browser. Manually embedded videos are a smaller screen footprint and allow space to swipe without touching the embedded video.

Firefox is likely your issue, simplest solution is to just browse this site with Safari. It will also help with you not being tracked by ad networks for adult content on Firefox, so won't influence any personalised campaigns if you use FF browser for normal browsing and safari for your adult browsing. You can reset your advertising ID which ad networks use to track your browser visits and sell to advertisers to reset your personalised ads too.

Does the same thing happen when running Safari?

It's always been my opinion that the Thai govt would lessen the impact of the lack of tourists and keep Thai safer, if they extend the visas of anyone with a valid short term tourist/business visa in the kingdom currently, as they did with the Chinese. That way those requiring visa runs will stay without the need to risk going into a potentially more dangerous country and bringing it back, as well as those tourists who may have planned to go on to Singapore/Malaysia etc but changed their mind and would now stay and spend in Thailand for longer. I would hope this or similar would get implemented sooner rather than later, the economic impact now is starting to take its toll on businesses that don't just survive hand to mouth.

The testing bias is most likely to be for the professionals, the ones the BMs here are most likely to meet. Another positive for prep before you come. I would assume that it refers to those they tested rather than over ladyboy numbers, because the data on that would be very sketchy.

Yeah that's very true. Plenty of guys here are what I call femboys which is probably a looser term than on this board, they wear makeup and a girl's hair style is all, but this is a fluid as the seasons in Northern climates, Thais have 10 descriptions for different types of gays though farangs only have LBTQI. When I think ladyboy, I mean dress and act like a girl, not a guy in drag, but a guy who lives life as a girl. My experience here leads me to believe the bar scene most familiar with board, is but a tiny % of those who are around the country. While I do know ladyboys in professional jobs, and some that are self employed, most are employed in the services/sales industry so probably more forward facing as that's the type of industry that suits that type of outgoing person too.

555 I wish! I live/work in the suburbs of Bangkok and they are everywhere. This is definitely the lowest number I've seen reported before, I had some stats last year from another post someone made, I'll have to try dig it out.

I find this number very hard to believe, it would mean I would be lucky to randomly see one a week in the population, let alone several or more a day as I currently do just going about my business.

Asia has many introduced foods, much of the Thai famous food for instance is not actually Thai, it's from Laos, which is where the isan people come from and only nationalised under a govt marketing campaign as 'one people' such as Som Tum, Laab, and most other spicy foods. Muslim foods in Thailand come from Malaysia, which in turn come from Sri Lanka, which is also where the Thai version of Buddhism comes from.

Crickets are fine, even served in Melbourne and other parts of Oz/Nz. Cricket based flour is also available in many APAC countries. My first visit to Asia, yeah I was scared of the food, but a few trips to Hong Kong and Guangzhou and I've eaten everything from Dog to scorpions to jelly fish tentacles, which all can be made delicious with the right seasoning. These days I eat dog in Korea as they do it best, Scorpion in Xi'an, Snake blood wine in Vietnam, Durian in Malaysia and Sichuan Phoenix Claw at any Yum Cha. You learn in time where does the best versions as your taste adapts. Though I still don't like blood pudding.